Cobwebs, Dust and a few Living Brain Cells

Anti-War Rhetoric Emboldens Jihadist Cut Throats

Well, I guess this settles it then; Researchers at Harvard say that publicly voiced doubts about the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a measurable “emboldenment effect” on insurgents there.

Periods of intense news media coverage in the United States of criticism about the war, or of polling about public opinion on the conflict, are followed by a small but quantifiable increases in the number of attacks on civilians and U.S. forces in Iraq, according to a study by Radha Iyengar, a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in health policy research at Harvard and Jonathan Monten of the Belfer Center at the university’s Kennedy School of Government.

The increase in attacks is more pronounced in areas of Iraq that have better access to international news media, the authors conclude in a report titled “Is There an ‘Emboldenment’ Effect? Evidence from the Insurgency in Iraq.”

D’OH!

That conclusion is patently obvious. To most sane rational thinkers. Which discounts any possibility Murtha, Durbin, Shillary, Reid or Pelosi will ever come to the same conclusion.